From New York Times, I'm Michael Bolarro. This is the Daily.

Today, the story of how a surprise ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court halted

fertility treatments across the state and sent a shockwave through the world of reproductive health.

I spoke with my colleague, A Zine Gareishi, about the court case itself and to a patient in Alabama about what it's like to navigate the

fallout. It's Monday, February 26th. I mean this Alabama ruling really seem to become almost out of nowhere for a lot of us and in a world where we frequently track court cases and we expect them on a certain

date, this didn't fall into that category. It was a genuine legal surprise. So tell us the story behind this case.

Yeah, so the actual incident at the center of this case

happened in December 2020 at a fertility clinic in Mobile, Alabama.

Basically, a person ended up wandering into the storage room of this fertility clinic,

which happened to be located in the hospital. to the storage room of this fertility clinic,

which happened to be located in the hospital.

They opened a tank where frozen embryos were stored,

pulled out of vial, and dropped them on on the ground and those embryos were destroyed.

Wow. These frozen embryos belonged to at least three couples that we know of

who were undergoing IVF or in vitro fertilization.

They're trying to have a baby.

And so this is a pretty unusual sounding situation.

We don't know why a person was able to get into this room,

why they stuck their hand in a tank that was holding

frozen embryos at negative 360 degrees Fahrenheit.

But the couples in the end filed suit against the fertility clinic and the hospital in which the

fertility clinic was located. And what should we know about the lawsuit that

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